


Cadets

by StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: #jakeboss, M/M, and again, and seriously this movie is so gay I'm so proud, and then seeing it again, and then seeing the movie again, enemies to friends to copilots, honestly if they don't make a prequel imma write one, jake is the best, living the dream, why imply this glorious content and snatch it away?, written a week after seeing the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 13:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16619711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms/pseuds/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms
Summary: A reflection on what cadet life might have been like for Jake Pentecost, and his history with Nate Lambert.





	Cadets

Jake had never wanted to be in the program. He’d always known that. He’d always _owned_ that.

It was what his father expected, enlistment. It was what he was genetically predestined for. And hell, maybe he was good at it… theoretically. Maybe he understood the tech in the intuitive way only a natural pilot would. Maybe he had that familial immutability that made the drift seem straightforward, simple, instinctive.

Stacker Pentecost took a clean slate into the drift… but Jake took steadiness. That was why he’d been sent to Sydney in Gipsy without a trial drift, not even a practice run to re-acquaint him with the mind of Nate Lambert. That was how they’d known it would even work in the first place, even though he’d never actually been in combat before.

More than anything, that was how he’d survived. His father dead without the possibility of reconciliation. _Mako_. Even feeling Nate slip from the drift when he’d been injured, feeling the certainty of Amara’s and his own demise before Liwen had rescued them.

He was drift compatible with most people. At least, that was what the simulations had projected while he’d still been a cadet.

But that wasn’t much to celebrate when you were always left carrying most of someone else’s emotional baggage.

Nate had been different. Mostly because they hadn’t gotten along. They’d argued constantly when the program had started (even though there had been an unending war to fight, and insane amounts of fame accruing to graduating rangers).

Nate had ignored the awe inspired by the Pentecost name. When Jake goaded him (which was often), Nate was the one who inevitably lost his temper.

Jake could fight, sure. But as with piloting, he preferred other things. Subtlety. Theft. Trading. Hustling. Actions with greater finesse.

Nate… He just wanted to throw down. Well, needed to, really.

It wasn’t easy for him as a cadet. He consistently struggled to find a copilot. Partly because he’d started the program at a lower point than the others - pulled off the street like Amara, for his strategic brilliance and determination. Pushed hard to catch up, even though he was young. He followed the rules, he valued the hierarchy, he royally pissed off most of his fellow cadets, just to feel some sense of _belonging_. But partly it was because Nate just didn’t know how to share himself with someone else.

So when Jake provoked him, Nate always, always had to fight back. He couldn’t help it.

Gradually, the attention of the other cadets got boring. They laughed at Jake’s jokes, they gasped over his simulation runs, and they vied to spar with him in the training ring.

Nate Lambert just wasn’t the same. And when Jake had reached the point of wondering if winding him up was going to be the only thing left for entertainment in the Shatterdome, one brawl had landed both of them on double-duty for a month and they’d been restricted to co-piloting with each other until the drift forced them to settle their differences.

Nate had resisted intensely. He’d passive-aggressively sabotaged at least five of their initial attempts at a neural handshake (this hadn’t fooled anyone; Pentecost was a magic copilot). This had been a new form of amusement, being as neurally welcoming as humanly possible and sitting back to watch Nate shred it all in fits of petulant fury.

Lambert had never been small, but he was definitely scrawny back then. When they’d both been sixteen, on edge with the constant pressure and the thrill of it all.

Jake had called him porcupine, chinless wonder and his special favourite, Backstreet Boy, sometimes because he was too clean-cut and pretty, sometimes because they’d hauled him in off a backstreet. He was pretty sure Nate didn’t understand the reference, but it still drove him crazy.

It didn’t take Jake long to figure out that he was looking forward more to tedious clean-up duty and forced failed drifting than to having a conversation with any of the other cadets.

It sure as hell didn’t take him long to steer into the skid.

When the drift finally worked, it was basically just a consequence of Stacker paying the cadets a motivational visit and forcing them into excessive demonstrations of their prowess.

Jake’s father knew about the bickering, the punishment, everything. He’d silently, sternly watched the other cadets going rounds in the training ring, and left Jake and Nate until last.

They’d trained together a lot. They’d _fought_ a lot.

But this was different. This was both of them with the highest expectations placed on them in a single moment.

This was a swing and a strike, a dodge, near-miss, a hair’s breadth between knuckles and skin, and Jake could feel the air shifting between them.

He still remembered it. Like a dance, like poetry in motion.

It wasn’t unlike incredible sex… and yeah, even at sixteen, Jake had been convinced he knew that.

He could have kept going, would have, until he’d dropped of exhaustion, but the presiding Ranger had called it off, recommended everyone cool down, and led Marshal Pentecost away before Jake had been able to perceive a glimmer of satisfaction or even disappointment in his impassive expression.

He’d stayed on the mat, breathing hard, waiting for his brain to kick in and supply something witty to throw at Lambert.

Nate had stayed too, slumped to one side, staring at a far wall blankly.

He inhaled. Jake glanced at him sideways. He exhaled.

‘I want to drift.’

 

Jake wasn’t the first one who managed to actually get into Nate’s head, but he expected he had an easier time of it than the others.

‘Exactly how Tarantino is your brain gonna be?’

Nate had squinted at him, unamused, and retorted. ’Try not to fall asleep this time.’

‘Bro-’ Jake shrugged into his helmet. ‘Just stop resisting my charms.’

So they’d drifted, and they’d drifted _well_.

Most of the deep stuff didn’t make it to the surface in the initial handshake. There was a flood of memories, but it was hard to pull one or two out of another person’s mind unless they fell into the trap of clinging to them. It was more like a general impression.

For Nate, it was of a famed but distant father and a devoted sister and expectations piled upon expectations.

For Jake, it was of loneliness, determination, and… relief.

He wanted to dig for an explanation, badly, and Nate would’ve felt that, but more importantly, they had a simulated Kaiju to annihilate.

It wasn’t until after they’d succeeded - _kick like this, watch that missile, plasma cannon now_ \- that Jake let the urge to explore Nate’s mind overtake him.

They didn’t stop drifting for a while afterwards. There was something strangely inviting about sharing thoughts in the wake of combat. Adrenaline slowly ebbing away, but elation remaining. Mutual appreciation, respect.

The details started rising. An all-too-vividly shared recollection of their earlier fight, mirrored in countless episodes spread over the six months they’d been stuck together already. Nate had been stunned by the natural flow of combat. Jake had felt the passing sting of his father’s self-restraint and had processed it away.

A memory of an encounter between Jake and Mako rose;

_‘- our father believes in your ability - ’_

_‘He believes in my ability to fail. You should be piloting-’_

_‘I believe in you.’_

_‘Mako… Thanks.’_

\- it took him several seconds to realise that it wasn’t even _his_ memory, that Nate had supplied something he’d accidentally seen, in instinctive response to Jake’s unexpressed desire for comfort.

Jake returned his own memory of a (different, and previously private) conversation with Mako.

_‘Fourth failed drift in a week-’_

_‘Cadet Lambert has excellent test scores. Far exceeding your own.’_ She’d responded merrily.

_‘But where is his sense of humour?’_

_‘You were not so concerned with his sense of humour when he started. “Refreshingly pretty” you said-’_

_‘Pretty.’_ He’d snorted.

 _‘Prettier than any of the female cadets, you said-’_ Mako concluded gleefully, and Jake had sighed.

_‘Damn right… still is, the sullen git.’_

Nate was laughing next to him in the simulator, a blush sweeping up his neck and engulfing his face.

His smile was intoxicating. Jake produced more amusements, little tidbits that he’d stacked up for his own and any copilot’s amusement - stealing things around the base for shits and giggles, practical jokes, funny memories.

Nate produced mainly memories of his own internal monologue, consisting of a few choice jokes about certain superior officers, remarkably funny observations about their fellow cadets, a sneaky undercurrent of jaded humour.

Nate was pretty _and_ funny, Jake learned, but he’d kept the latter to himself because most of the time he ran the narrow border between smart and insubordinate.

But the relief -that was a surprise. A surprise in the limited way something could be a surprise when it was revealed to you as factually as your own thoughts.

Nate was relieved to be able to drift with _him_.

Not Jake Pentecost - not Jake the Natural. Just… Jake. The annoying cadet who made Nate feel at least faintly at home, by irritating him, by poking and prodding him, nicknaming him, observing him… _acknowledging_ him.

Nate admired Jake’s skills, his sense of humour, his ability to think beyond the borders of the Shatterdome. His ideas of what it meant to be free - something Nate wasn’t sure either of them had ever experienced.

 

Every subsequent drift between them was easy. Comfortable and smooth, practiced in a way which barely made sense. They still argued, inside and outside the simulator, but it was increasingly satisfying. It was like playing chess, trying to out-think each other by twelve moves because they each knew how the other would play.

They drifted a lot, trained a lot, argued a lot.

They made memories which were intended specifically to be shared in the drift - Jake pilfering ice-cream and barely avoiding getting caught, Nate noting that someone’s haircut resembled a hamster travelling at high velocity, shared looks over the routine propaganda speech from the Ranger whenever anyone underperformed.

Simultaneously, the drift took the wait out of the awkward bits.

By the time they’d drifted twice, Jake had already thought about his copilot naked. Extensively.

Partially this was the result of sharing quarters, partially it was a result of abruptly losing interest in anyone who wasn’t Nate Lambert.

It was clear that Nate wasn’t surprised, but the intensity seemed to catch him unprepared ( _“Seriously? It’s been 18 hours… don’t you sleep?”_ ).

Jake had made a great deal of progress already with most of the other cadets (only occasionally in jest), but Lambert had always been out-of-reach by virtue of how uptight he was.

Except he wasn’t that uptight, really, and now that Jake knew that… he was hardly able to just bypass the tantalising implications ( _“You keep doing push-ups shirtless, what else d’you expect?”_ )

By the fourth drift, Nate had elected to fight fire with fire.

_‘Man, if you’re gonna sleep in those boxers-’_

_‘I can ixnay the boxers if you want.’_

_‘C’mon, Jake, how am I s’posed to get anything done?’_

_‘That depends on… what… you’re trying to do, Cadet.’_

By the sixth drift, both of them had accepted the inevitable. Keeping things platonic between two unrelated copilots was a tough sell. There weren’t just individual opinions and attitudes to _feel_ , there was the full-blown empathetic experience of them. It made navigating the typical (what people used to call typical) traps and pitfalls of a relationship basically unnecessary.

_‘Damn, you know how often I’ve thought about this?’_

_‘Of course I fucking do.’_

By the eighth drift, Jake was wondering how there had ever been a time without Nate, or the ghost of him, sharing his mind.

It was like that for nearly a year.

They were partners. Copilots. Jake didn’t think they were lovers, necessarily… or even boyfriends.

They were just a halved entity. Admittedly, that entity was a Jaegar, but still. The drive to be close permeated everything.

In the end, that was what tripped them up.

Mutual paranoia. He still couldn’t say where it had started. Maybe Nate thinking that Jake wasn’t committed enough (he wasn’t and Nate always knew it). Maybe Jake thinking that he was losing his dreams of freedom to the PPDC and even to a shared existence with Lambert. But one speck of doubt was enough to send them both spiralling into a vicious cycle of distrust and blame. The fighting worsened exponentially, and finally devolved into vicious silence and actual intent to wound.

The drifting still worked, even the fighting - somehow Jake managed to maintain his record (he was a natural, after all) - but they were losing the partnership.

Probably it was never going to work. Jake was nearly eighteen. He wanted to learn what freedom felt like before the war killed him, and Nate didn’t understand.

The low blow was Nate pointing out that Marshal Pentecost would never allow it, never forgive him for being a quitter. The lower blow was Jake asking Nate how he’d ever find another partner who could tolerate him, because even without Nate he was a gifted pilot, but the same wasn’t true the other way around.

He’d ended up in that Mark 4.

Then the med-bay.

Marshal Pentecost had said a lot of things - most of them about Jake. A few of them about Nate.

And then it was over, because Jake had packed his bags and left, and as soon as he’d gotten out, he’d never wanted to go back. Not even Stacker Pentecost’s approval was worth a life sentence doing something he didn’t even want to do.

Not even Nate Lambert’s pretty face.

There were four benefits to being forced to go back. Saving the world didn’t even top the list.


End file.
